The inventive concepts disclosed herein relate generally to the field of night vision optical systems, and in particular digital night vision goggles.
Aircraft pilots may wear night vision goggles when operating aircraft at night. One issue with such systems is the difficulty for a pilot in recognizing the transition at the horizon to the sky in low light level environments, such as in overcast night environments. If a pilot does not easily recognize the transition at the horizon to the sky, the pilot may lose spatial orientation, which could potentially result in a pilot crashing the aircraft. This is especially true when flying with night vision at low altitudes over the ocean.
Current analog night vision goggles can only produce a green display with little or no contrast between the sky and ocean at the horizon. Some systems provide a blue color for the sky cues by pasting a blue image of a sky on an image for standard night vision goggles. This approach, however, does not include surface information, such as clouds or other aircraft in the sky, and results in significant loss of visual acuity. These optical approaches are also limited to the central 20° of the display.